More States May End Use of Race in Hiring and Admissions

Ward Connerly, a well-known critic of affirmative action, is urging the residents of five states—Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma—to pass ballot measures this November banning the use of racial, ethnic, and gender preferences by public colleges and other state and local agencies, Peter Schmidt writes on The Chronicle’s Web site.

Three states—California, Michigan, and Washington—have already outlawed affirmative-action preferences, he writes. If the five states Connerly is focusing on pass the measures, the share of the U.S. population residing in states with such bans will jump from about 17.7 percent to just over 25 percent—or to more than 31 percent, if you count Florida, where the former Republican governor, Jeb Bush, abolished “affirmative-action preferences in state government through a 1999 executive order and subsequently persuaded the governing board of the state’s universities to follow suit,” Schmidt notes.

Read the complete story.